Iranian Ambassador to Turkey Muhammed Farazmand on Wednesday paid a visit to Turkey’s neo-nationalist Homeland Party (VP) leader, Doğu Perinçek, in Ankara, party media outlet the Aydınlık daily reported.
Perinçek, the neo-nationalist ally of Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is one of the staunch supporters of Iran in Turkey. His party promotes the idea of Turkey, Russia and Iran becoming allied powers along with China against the West.
Before the meeting, which was closed to the press, Ambassador Farazmand expressed his gratitude for the strong relations between Turkey and Iran. He said the two countries faced a common threat and shared a common destiny along with other countries in the region. The ambassador also thanked the VP leader for his support and for “standing by Iran against the embargo that was cruelly imposed by the US.”
In an unusual move, Aydınlık did not quote any remarks by Perinçek either before or after the meeting.
The Wednesday meeting was actually the second between Perinçek and the ambassador in a little more than six weeks. The Iranian Embassy hosted an iftar dinner in honor of Perinçek, who is believed by many to be covertly anti-religious, in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on May 19. During the dinner Perinçek said the Iranian resistance against the United States and Israel was the biggest Ramadan gift to his party. He also claimed that “a strong Iran means a strong Turkey.”
In April a VP group led by Secretary-general Utku Reyhan visited the Iranian ambassador in a show of solidarity after the United States officially designated the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist group.
Perinçek was officially invited to Iran in 2017 and was received by Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser in international affairs to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He was also welcomed as a guest of honor at the Iranian parliament.
During a press conference in Tehran Perinçek praised the Erdoğan government’s purge of the Turkish military and told Iranian journalists that pro-NATO generals, officers and even military cadets were being dismissed from the armed forces after a controversial coup attempt on July 15, 2016, hinting that Turkey was leaving the Atlantic alliance and taking its rightful place in Asia.
(Perinçek’s press conference in Tehran on July 13, 2017. Source:Youtube/Kare Medya. Translated by the user.)
